Author's Note: Apologies for the delay in updating but RL got in the way this last week. And I am beyond thrilled that this fic has gone past the 500 review mark. Thank you all so much!
Feels Like Home
Chapter 25
"Dude."
Castle started a little, distracted from the heart he'd painstakingly been drawing in the foam of Beckett's coffee. (Yes, he was a sap, ridiculously, even sickeningly, besotted.)
He turned to see Esposito and Ryan standing shoulder to shoulder in front of him, both looking decidedly grim.
Um. He had the sudden sinking feeling that his generally amazing morning was about to take a distinct turn for the worse.
"Hey, guys," he greeted them cautiously. "You want coffee? The machine's all yours," he gestured behind him.
"We want to have a word with you," Ryan said.
Okay, seriously? They were going to give him this talk? They were his friends too.
"About what?" he asked, wondering if he could possibly play dumb long enough until someone else would come into the break room and end this little ambush.
And judging from the looks on Espo's and Ryan's faces, that little ploy had not helped.
"You and Beckett," Espo began meaningfully. "You guys sleeping together now?"
He tried not to choke and hoped he wasn't actually blushing. "None of your business," he managed to say. It wasn't. Beckett would probably shoot them herself if she knew they'd asked such a thing. It occurred to him to wonder if she knew about the pool going on about the two of them—she would like that even less. Although he did wonder, idly, who would win the pool now that it could be settled.
"So what is she, another notch in your bedpost?" Espo asked.
He glared. That was seriously what they thought?! "No! I can't believe you'd—how can you even—I wouldn't—she's not—" he gave up on forming complete sentences and just repeated, "No."
There was a moment of silence and then both Ryan and Esposito started snickering and then laughing outright.
"That was smooth, Castle," Ryan mocked. "Call yourself a writer and can't even speak in complete sentences."
"Defensive much, huh, bro?" Espo quipped. "You should have seen your face!"
He attempted another glare but gave up, forcing a rather wary smile. "Not funny, guys."
"No, it wasn't funny," Ryan agreed. "It was hilarious."
Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, idiots.
They both sobered up and fixed him with serious looks.
"We know you care about her and she looks happy," Ryan said.
He smiled automatically at that. Kate did look happy. She was practically glowing with happiness today; it was in all the smiles she couldn't quite hide, sparkling in her eyes, infusing her voice. And it was because of him. And seeing her look so happy just did something to his heart, making it clench a little in his chest even as it felt buoyant with joy.
He had wanted Kate to be happy since pretty much the moment he'd met her, when the haunted shadows in her eyes had drawn him. And in the year since then, since she'd told him the story of her mom, he had wanted to see the devastated sheen of tears in her eyes be turned into laughter, the brightness of joy. He wouldn't have said, exactly, that Kate had been unhappy before he'd met her but Kate—Beckett—had always been so… cautious, so restrained, in the good moments. Always seemed to be inwardly, even subconsciously, bracing herself for the next blow, as if she didn't expect happiness, didn't believe that happiness could last, at least not for her. And more than anything in the world, with the exception of Alexis's happiness, he wanted Kate Beckett to be happy.
He'd told her that he brought her coffee because he liked to see her smile and it was, in some ways, the most simple and the most profound truth of his life—he liked to see Kate Beckett smile. The real, bright smile that didn't appear nearly often enough. She was smiling today. She was happy today. Because of him. And nothing that didn't relate to Alexis had ever made him as happy as he was now because of Kate.
But for all his near euphoria, something in him was also terrified. Because her happiness—this relationship with Kate—just meant so much and now that they were actually together, he couldn't help but be a little terrified too and hope desperately that this relationship wouldn't end the way all his other relationships had. Hope that he could always make her as happy as she was today. Hope that he could be enough for her, could be strong enough for her.
"But just so you know," Espo began, his voice becoming decidedly sober and distinctly menacing again, "if you hurt her…"
"I know," he said quickly, "if I hurt her, you'll hurt me." If he ever seriously hurt Kate, he would probably volunteer to have Espo and Ryan beat him up, he would feel so guilty about it. He would never willingly hurt her and he would do all he could to keep from inadvertently hurting her too.
"Oh, you might not actually feel much pain," Ryan said slowly, drawing the words out in a distinctly threatening fashion. There was no missing the toughness in Ryan now.
Espo finished the thought. "But no one would ever find your body either."
Castle tried very hard not to gulp or show any reaction whatsoever and managed a nod. "Understood."
Damn. Even knowing that the boys (probably) wouldn't actually kill him, the threat managed to be frightening, if only because Castle knew perfectly well that if they did decide to actually kill him, they were perfectly capable of ensuring that no one would, in fact, find his body. They were homicide detectives; they knew all the ways of getting rid of a body. (For that matter, so did he—but that thought didn't exactly help when it was his own potential murder at issue.)
It didn't help either knowing perfectly well that the threat wasn't being delivered only on behalf of Ryan and Espo but was the implicit promise of, oh, pretty much every cop in the building, certainly every other cop in Homicide. He knew enough about the brotherhood of cops to know that and he knew that Beckett was well-respected, even popular, in Homicide, partly because she'd proven herself but also because she was eminently fair and, unlike a lot of detectives, didn't talk down to the uniforms or muscle in to take undeserved credit but always made sure to give credit where it was due to every uniform who helped on a case.
"Good." Espo nodded and left the break room.
Ryan followed him but he paused at the door. "Oh and Castle?"
Castle looked at Ryan a little warily. "Yeah?"
Ryan smiled. "I'm happy for you guys."
And then he was gone before Castle could so much as respond.
Okay. That had been… not exactly what he was expecting.
He shook his head a little to clear it and picked up Beckett's coffee to take it to her.
She took it with one of the wide, bright smiles that lit up her eyes. "Thanks, Castle."
He saw her smile soften, her cheeks flushing a little with pleasure, as she noted the heart shape on the foam. And he decided that he really didn't care if he was a sap, as long as it made Kate Beckett look like that.
"Were the boys giving you a hard time just now?" she asked after a moment.
He managed a small shrug. "Sort of. They gave me the talk, you know, that if I hurt you, they would hurt me."
She made a small face. "They shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry they put you through it."
"I'm not," he blurted out immediately, surprising even himself.
"You're not?"
"No. I'm glad they did it because I know it's because they care and people should have people that look out for them like that, to have their back, and I know they've got yours, not because you can't take care of yourself—I know you can—but we all need help sometimes." It was not the most coherent of explanations and he was momentarily disgusted with himself. He was a writer; he should be able to explain this better, more eloquently.
But then she moved her hand to let her fingers brush briefly against his where it rested on her desk. "Oh, Castle," she sighed softly. "You're such a good man."
A good man. Warmth settled in his chest and he thought that he would do just about anything if it meant that Kate Beckett would keep looking at him the way she was now. Kate thought he was a good man. And he thought that maybe he really was—could be—good enough for her. He knew that he would willingly spend the rest of his life trying.
He managed a rather rueful face. "I try."
She gave him a soft, affectionate look even as she ostensibly turned her attention back to the paperwork on her desk, picking up her pen again. But before she started to write, she paused and added, quietly, not quite looking at him, "The boys mean well but I know I don't need protection from you. I trust you, Castle."
Oh Kate. His breath caught in his throat, his heart seeming to swell in his chest. She trusted him. And from Kate Beckett, that was almost as close to a declaration of love as you could get without the actual words. At least, when combined with the other things she'd said to him, the way she'd been with him last night. He knew her, knew how slow she was to trust anyone. And he knew, too, that he had hurt her and violated her trust before when he'd looked into her mom's case without her permission. But she had forgiven him. And somehow, amazingly, she had come to trust him again. Trust him with her body—he felt a flicker of arousal at the thought and had to forcibly yank his mind away from dwelling on the memories that accompanied it—and more importantly, trust him with her heart. Her vulnerable, well-protected heart.
It was both uplifting and humbling at the same time. He was suddenly reminded of the way he'd felt years ago whenever baby Alexis had fallen asleep on his chest and he would look at her, at the tiny, fragile creature who was so entirely dependent on him and who trusted him enough to sleep while lying on his chest, and he'd been overwhelmed at the magnitude of the responsibility. And all he could do was make a silent, solemn vow to Alexis and to whatever higher powers there might be that he would always be there for Alexis, would always take care of her and protect her and never ever do anything that might harm her in any way.
Kate Beckett trusted him and, except for Alexis's love and trust, nothing would ever mean more to him. And he made a silent vow to Kate and to himself (and to Jim and, yes, Johanna Beckett too, wherever she was) that he would never do anything to hurt Kate, would never violate her trust again, would be there for her, always.
He was distracted, startled out of his thoughts when his phone buzzed in his jacket and he pulled it out to see that it was a new text message from his mother. (Odd. His mother rarely texted.)
He opened the message and then grimaced, momentarily covering his face with his hand. He supposed he should have been expecting something of the sort but he hadn't thought about it, had been preoccupied with Kate, and to be entirely honest, had been a little too giddy for the better part of the morning to think entirely clearly.
He felt Beckett's glance and then heard her ask, "Castle, what is it?"
He didn't answer in words, only handed over his phone so she, too, could read the message from his mother.
Alexis tells me you and Katherine have finally come to your senses and realized what I've known for months, that you two are perfect for each other. I'm glad to see you finally took my advice, Richard. I'll come over for dinner tonight and you two can tell me all about it.
Kate's eyes brightened as she smiled at his phone and then turned her smile on him. "I guess I don't need to worry about what Martha thinks about us."
"Maybe we should eat dinner out," he suggested hopefully. "A date night? I could get us a table at Le Cirque or something." Or not Le Cirque since that would attract the attention of the press (oh crap, the press—he made a mental note to talk to Kate about that) but still, a date night with Kate Beckett—he wanted it.
She grinned at him. "Don't be silly, Castle. You know we can't avoid your mother forever."
"We could try," he groused although, of course, she was right. Pity. He sighed. "Fine, we'll have dinner with my mother. I apologize beforehand for anything my mother might say. She doesn't understand the concept of personal privacy sometimes." (Even so, it was hard to feel at all disappointed when Kate was smiling at him the way she was.)
She only laughed. "You're being ridiculous. I'm not worried about Martha."
"That makes one of us," he muttered but he couldn't help but smile because, god, he loved how comfortable Kate had become around his family now. It was almost enough to make him feel rather grateful to Scott Dunn, in a twisted way, for making it so Kate would need to stay at the loft for so long. He couldn't imagine where he and Beckett would be, relationship-wise, if it hadn't been for Beckett staying at the loft these past weeks, but he knew they'd be nowhere near where they were now. Until she'd stayed at the loft, Beckett hadn't spent much time with either his mother or Alexis, had really only seen them a handful of times, and had always preserved a little reserve, a little distance, in their interactions. (To the extent that anyone could really act distant and reserved around his mother.)
Now—well, now Kate had helped his mother prepare for an audition, had played laser tag with him and Alexis. Kate had become more a part of his family than Gina had ever been—than Meredith had ever been, really. And he loved it. He was a little concerned over Alexis's odd reaction that morning—he knew she must have been embarrassed to find out about him and Kate the way she had—but he knew how much Alexis had come to care about Kate, couldn't imagine that his kind, fair-minded daughter would take some sort of irrational dislike to Kate just because he and Kate were together now.
Beckett rolled her eyes at him and then fixed a questioning look on him. "I do have one question, though, Castle."
"What?"
"What did Martha mean when she says you took her advice? What advice?"
"I have no ide—" he began since he'd been confused by that (but hadn't thought much about it because feeling at a loss was a relatively common emotion for him where his mother was concerned)—he hadn't talked to his mother about his feelings for Beckett. He broke off, something his mother had said to him a couple months ago returning to mind. "No, wait, never mind, I do know what she's talking about."
"And what is it?"
"It was something she said to me right after we closed the Victor Fink case a couple months ago, you remember, the one with Jeremy Preswick, the guy with amnesia."
She nodded. "Of course I remember. What did Martha say?"
"It was after I got home that morning after we'd finally finished up all the paperwork to get the charges against Jeremy officially dropped. I walked in and my mother made a comment about me doing a walk of shame."
"Oh." Kate snorted a soft laugh, even as she blushed, apparently remembering her own awkward walk of shame that morning.
"I told my mother that I'd been with you finishing up a case and my mother…" he paused, suddenly, ridiculously, a little unsure of how Kate might react. Which was entirely stupid of him considering everything he and Kate had said and done last night but this was still so… new… that he was finding it a little hard to adapt to this brave new world.
"Stop stalling, Castle."
"My mother said, and I quote, 'you should kiss that girl while you're both young,'" he blurted out.
Beckett blinked and then she burst out laughing, enough that a couple people looked over at them since Beckett didn't laugh out loud often at work. (He was abruptly thankful to his mother for her blunt suggestion—for once—because he loved hearing Beckett's laugh.)
"Hey Beckett," Espo scooted his chair over to join them, followed (of course) by Ryan, who sent his own chair rolling towards them with enough speed that he needed to reach out and grasp the arm rest on Ryan's chair before Ryan went rolling right past while Espo just rolled his eyes. "Wanna tell us the joke?"
"Yeah, Beckett, never knew doing paperwork could be so funny," Ryan chimed in.
Beckett rolled her eyes. "Castle just told me about something funny Martha said once."
They both turned their attention to him. "Well, tell us what Mrs. R. said too. Come on, Castle, we're stuck doing paperwork," Ryan wheedled.
Yeah, he was not telling the boys what his mother had said. Ever.
He glanced at Beckett to see that she was watching him expectantly, amusement still glinting in her eyes, but without the slightest trace of embarrassment and he realized that she already knew he wouldn't tell the boys what his mother had said about them. (She trusted him.)
He thought quickly. "I was just telling Beckett about when Alexis helped my mother set up a MySpace account—or a MyFace account as my mother persists in calling it."
Espo snickered. "A MyFace account? That's a catchy name."
Castle grinned. "Yeah, I know. And my mother, being my mother, used a nearly 30-year-old picture of her to put on her profile page."
"Not that unusual, lots of people do that sort of thing," Ryan commented. "The internet allows people to pretend to be what they're not."
"Like my mother pretending she's still young?" Castle retorted and Beckett swatted his arm.
"Be nice, Castle, or I'm telling Martha you said that."
He gave her an exaggerated injured expression. "I'm being honest. My mother is many things but you have to admit a 30-year-old picture of her is not going to be an honest representation."
"So what was so funny?" Espo prompted.
Oh right. Damn it, he hadn't quite thought this through. "My mother got a friend request from her high school sweetheart and it turned out his picture looked like it was probably the one from his college yearbook or something and my mother started to panic over what he would think of how much she had changed from the picture. But my mother, in true Martha Rodgers fashion, agreed to meet up with him and got dressed up to the nines and I asked what she would do if it turned out he was disappointed in how she'd changed over the last 30 years. And my mother shimmied her hips, making the beads on her dress dance, and said, 'Oh please, darling, look at me. Come on, it doesn't get any better than this.'" He pitched his voice into a (bad) imitation of his mother's declaration.
Beckett let out another laugh while the boys chuckled.
"Mrs. R. is a character," Ryan commented.
Beckett grinned. "Martha is a lot of fun and she does have some great stories."
"At least half of which are entirely made up," he inserted.
Espo gave him a look. "Says the man who makes up stories for a living."
Ryan snickered and Beckett smirked at him while he pulled an exaggerated pout.
"Okay, boys, you've had your funny story. Now go back to work," Beckett said briskly.
The boys made faces at her but did as she said and he relaxed a little.
Beckett turned back to him with a grin, her eyes bright. "Nice story about Martha, Castle."
He shrugged. "My mother is an almost endless source of amusing stories."
"And she told you that you should kiss me. Why didn't you?" Beckett's eyes danced. And he forgot how to breathe because she was smiling at him (well, smirking at him), her eyes lit up with green sparks of amusement and affection, and she was teasing him—flirting with him—and she was so, so breathtakingly beautiful that he thought he would happily spend the rest of his life looking at her.
He managed to give her a rather challenging look. "Because I decided that I wanted to not get shot more than I wanted to kiss you."
Beckett scoffed. "Fortune favors the bold. You could have taken your chances. Or didn't you believe that I would succumb to your charm?" she asked teasingly.
He gave her a steady, serious look. "Maybe, if you were less important to me, I could have—and would have," he admitted. True enough—he'd never been so immediately attracted to a woman, never wanted a woman as fiercely as he'd wanted Kate from the moment he'd set eyes on her, and then waited more than a year to kiss that woman. He hadn't really had to try to impress a woman in years, hadn't had to make an effort. Until Kate Beckett had turned him down and made it clear that she found him irritating and didn't like him—and he'd been caught, had set out to make her like him. And he'd realized, slowly, that he wanted not only her body but her friendship, her trust, and then, finally, her heart, as he'd—unwittingly, really, but perhaps inevitably—tumbled headlong into love with her. "But I decided a long time ago that I wanted to keep you in my life and I didn't want to risk losing that by making an idiot mistake and kissing you when I wasn't sure you wanted me to."
She blushed and admitted, very quietly, not quite meeting his eyes, "I did want you to kiss me. I… was always attracted to you too. Not that I admitted it to myself until recently," she added. "But I'd have given in if you'd kissed me. I know I would have."
Oh god. Did she have to say such things in the middle of the bullpen when he couldn't, absolutely couldn't, reach out and kiss her?
He managed a smirk. "Now you tell me."
"Martha was right. You should have kissed me."
He grinned, deliberately waggling his eyebrows at her, and this time he didn't need to force it. "Instead you kissed me first. I think I like it better this way." He affected a thoughtful expression. "You were just overcome with the sheer force of your lust for me and kissed me first."
She snorted. "I was not overcome with lust."
He put on an innocent expression. "Now, now, Beckett, it's not good to lie." The expression dissolved almost immediately—because Beckett's look was becoming distinctly alarming. He dropped the Beckett-teasing, if only to save his ear from being twisted off. "But we must make sure that my mother knows I did not actually take her advice because if she gets it into her head that I did take her advice, my mother will start acting as if she is single-handedly responsible for us being together and I will never, ever hear the end of it."
He relaxed as Beckett's expression softened into a smile again. "Well, just to spare you from the torture of hearing Martha gloat, I suppose we can tell her that you didn't take her advice."
"Thank you," he said with a fervency that was not entirely feigned.
She gave him a last, small smile and then returned to her paperwork while he tried not to watch her since she still didn't like it when he watched her doing paperwork (staring is still creepy, Castle, as she'd told him earlier that morning).
Instead he settled to a cheerful contemplation of the day. His mother knew and clearly approved (not that he'd been at all concerned about that). Montgomery knew and approved; the boys knew and approved, as long as he didn't hurt Beckett (which was also fine, as he had absolutely no intention of ever hurting Beckett).
As for Alexis—his cheer faded a little. Alexis's demeanor that morning had been a little troubling and he hadn't missed the way Alexis had called Kate "Detective" which was something she hadn't called Kate since the first days of Kate's stay at the loft. More troubling had been Alexis's tone. In any other teen, the politeness of it would probably have been reassuring but he knew Alexis and her overly polite voice was not a good sign. Alexis had good manners—he'd been at some pains to instill them in her—but she wasn't stiff or formal (unsurprisingly, since he himself wasn't either) and she hadn't treated Kate with that sort of careful courtesy since Kate had moved in. And Alexis tended to act formal when she was feeling vulnerable, unsure of herself, using politeness as a shield. He always knew that Meredith had done something to bother Alexis when Alexis started acting as if Meredith was a distant relative whom she didn't know very well.
But he knew his daughter and he knew how much Alexis cared about Kate now. And he was confident that Alexis would talk to him about whatever was bothering her.
He remembered the way Kate had said, I care about Alexis too, and smiled. No, he wasn't worried about Alexis's reaction. Not really. Not much, at any rate.
Castle turned to Beckett as they entered the loft that evening. His mother had not arrived yet and Alexis was nowhere in sight, was most likely in her room. Which was somewhat concerning since Alexis usually stayed downstairs in the living room until after dinner.
"I'm going to go up and see if Alexis is home," he said.
Beckett nodded. "Okay. I was thinking we could order in tonight in case talking to Alexis takes some time and that way we don't have to worry about cooking."
"Sounds good. You can pick. You know where the delivery menus are." He tugged her in to kiss her quickly on the lips—well, he intended for the kiss to be brief but he'd spent the entire day not kissing Beckett and he couldn't bring himself to pull away that quickly and fortunately, judging from the way she immediately melted against him, she didn't seem any more inclined to end the kiss than he was. God, he was never ever going to get tired of being able to kiss Kate Beckett, never going to get enough of the taste of her, the feel of her.
But he did, finally, manage to stop kissing her, drawing back just a little to see her looking deliciously dazed and breathless (pretty much the way he felt too).
She blinked a few times and then gave him a gentle nudge with her hands as she let her arms fall from around his neck. "Go talk to your daughter, Castle."
He released her and stepped back. "I'm going, I'm going." He backed towards the stairs and only turned around at the last second, but even as he started up the stairs, he glanced back to see her watching him, a faint, soft smile playing around her lips. The words, I love you, came to his lips, almost bursting out of him, but he closed his lips firmly. He wasn't going to say the words out loud, not quite yet. Would give this new relationship of theirs a little more time to settle, become more comfortable. (And after the way she'd reacted when he'd only said he thought he was falling in love with her, he couldn't deny his heart was a little apprehensive about saying the real words, irrational as it was. Because he believed—knew—that Kate loved him. But this was Kate, cautious and still emotionally reserved, and he wasn't sure she was ready to hear the words yet.)
He knocked gently on Alexis's door. "Alexis? Sweetheart, can I come in?"
"Come in, Dad."
He pushed open Alexis's door and stepped inside, closing her door behind him.
Alexis turned away from her desk to face him while he sat down on her bed and then gestured for her to come sit next to him.
She did, after just a moment of hesitation, and he touched his hand gently to her chin, nudging her now-blushing face until he could meet her eyes.
"I wanted to talk to you about this morning, about me and Beckett," he began, a little uncertainly. He still didn't know what to say. Alexis knew he dated but he had never prepared for how to talk to Alexis about seeing a woman leaving his bedroom early in the morning after spending the night with him. There was a reason he never invited women over. He hadn't even let Gina spend the night until after they'd been engaged and he'd had a long talk with Alexis before he'd proposed to Gina and another talk before Gina moved in. He and Alexis had a mostly-unspoken understanding never to talk about his, um, social life until a relationship got to the point where he was comfortable introducing the woman to Alexis (which had almost never happened), mostly because he preferred to pretend that Alexis still had no idea what sex was and believed that he spent his occasional nights out with women talking or playing board games (as he'd told Alexis when she'd been around 6 and had asked him after one such night out what he did when he went out.)
Kate was, obviously, not just any woman to him, was so far removed from being just another woman that he honestly wasn't sure how to approach this conversation with Alexis, how to tell her that he and Kate had gone from being friends to lovers, especially when Alexis had already seen Kate leaving his bedroom in the morning. "I—uh—Kate told me what happened this morning, how you found out. I'm sorry, Alexis."
A faint frown of confusion flickered across her face. "You're sorry?"
"Sorry you found out that way," he clarified. "I know it must have been—that isn't how I intended to tell you but this… me and Kate… was a little sudden and there wasn't really time to talk to you beforehand." Which was true enough. Ideally, he supposed he would have had a chance to talk to Alexis before he and Kate slept together but with the way things had happened, it hadn't really been an option, even if he'd had the higher brain power to think of such a thing. "I know it must be weird for you because you know Kate. Are you okay with this, me and Kate being together, pumpkin?"
He found himself holding his breath. Because, oh god, what would he do if Alexis said she wasn't? Alexis had never indicated she had a problem with him dating but she was older now, a teenager and growing up way too quickly, and she knew Kate in a way she hadn't known any other woman he'd ever dated, which had to make some difference. If Alexis wasn't happy about this, if she asked him to, he would have to give Kate up.
Wouldn't he? Her entire life, he had always put Alexis first, let her happiness come above his own (which, for the most part, hadn't been difficult because he and Alexis didn't disagree often and Alexis's happiness made him happy.) But for the first time in Alexis's life, though, he suddenly knew that even if Alexis wasn't happy about his relationship with Kate, he wouldn't—he couldn't—give Kate up. Alexis's opinion mattered, would always matter to him, but this was his life; Kate was his choice. And Alexis would have to learn to accept it, which she would, he believed that. But oh god, it might nearly split him in half until Alexis accepted it because nothing hurt him as much as being at odds with Alexis did, as he knew from the few times that it had happened.
"You… really care about her, don't you, Dad," she said quietly, and in spite of the phrasing, it wasn't a question. His breath rushed out of him, hope fluttering in his chest, along with his usual optimism, because she didn't sound upset.
"Yeah, Alexis, I do," he responded carefully. "But you know nothing and no one will ever come between you and me."
That got him a brief, faint smile. "I know." And he relaxed a little because in her tone was a tinge of her usual Silly Dad tone that she reserved for when he'd said something ridiculous or so obvious it didn't need to be said.
She paused and then asked, "Does she make you happy?"
"Yeah, she does." And that was the simple truth.
Alexis nodded. "Okay, good. I want you to be happy."
Oh, his little girl. He felt a surge of love so powerful he was, not for the first time, amazed that he didn't physically burst from it, knocked completely off his feet by the force of his love for his daughter. He put his arm around her shoulders, tugging her in to press a kiss against her hair. "So you're okay with this?"
"Yes, Dad, I'm okay. I'm happy if you're happy," she said, repeating something he occasionally said to her.
He suddenly felt like an idiot for even questioning it in the first place. He knew his daughter. He kissed her hair again. "Love you, pumpkin," he murmured against her hair.
"Love you too."
He smiled. His precious girl. He didn't particularly like Meredith anymore and was more than glad that she lived on the other side of the country, but she had given him Alexis and Alexis was, still, always, the best thing that had ever happened to him.
"Dad?" she asked against his shoulder.
He drew back just enough to meet her eyes. "Yeah, sweetheart?"
"So is she… moving in, like, for real now? I mean—I know she's been staying here because she hasn't found an apartment yet but are you—is she—"
"I don't know, Alexis," he answered quickly. "We haven't talked about that at all. This… it's new and I don't know what she thinks about that." He didn't want Beckett to move out, not now, not ever. He loved having Beckett around all the time, loved seeing her in the mornings before work and in the evenings after work, loved seeing her on the weekends and on the days she was off-duty. And after last night, he most certainly never wanted to spend another night without her again. He wanted to fall asleep beside her every night, wake up beside her every morning (which he had not been able to do this morning, even if he did understand and appreciate her reasoning, but even so, waking up alone this morning had not been particularly pleasant.) "But whatever happens, we'll talk about it with you," he promised. He and Kate would have to. He might not want Beckett to ever leave but he didn't doubt that Beckett had her own thoughts on that and the loft was Alexis's home as much as it was his.
He bent and kissed Alexis's forehead. "Gram will be over for dinner. I think we're just going to order in tonight. Any preferences?"
She shook her head. "Anything's fine."
"Okay." He stood up and then paused at the door, looking back at her. "Kate cares about you a lot, you know, sweetie."
He inwardly frowned as a vague shadow of some expression he couldn't quite read flitted across her face.
"I'm fine, Dad," was all she said in response. "I'll come down for dinner in a little while."
"Okay, pumpkin."
He left her room after giving her a last look. That was… odd… He wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. He would have said Alexis was fine with him and Beckett being together—she'd said it was fine and she wanted him to be happy and her eyes, her expression, had been clear when she'd said it.
But something had changed when he'd said that Kate cared about her too. But he didn't see why that—which Alexis had to know already—would have made Alexis look… the way she had. And what bothered him was that he couldn't even identify what the expression had been so he couldn't, quite, confront her about it since he wasn't even sure it was necessarily a bad thing. He just… didn't like the sense that he didn't know what his daughter was thinking or feeling. He wasn't used to it. He suppressed a sigh. He supposed, with her growing up as fast as she was, he really needed to get used to it. He just didn't want to.
He wanted Alexis to stay young, his little girl, forever, where she felt comfortable talking to him about everything that went on in her life. But that time had passed, years ago, really, from the moment she'd become a teenager or even before that. He just didn't want to admit it.
At that moment, he thought he would give just about everything he owned for Alexis to be back at the age of hosting tea parties for herself and her dolls and him. Even if, after the first few of them, those tea parties had been rather excruciating affairs, him scrunched up in chairs made for much smaller people and making a show of drinking and eating food that didn't exist (or wasn't actually edible).
He sighed and mentally shook himself out of his suddenly maudlin mood.
Kate was waiting downstairs. Kate, who loved him, who cared about his daughter and his mother. Alexis was fine with his and Kate's new relationship. As was his mother. He felt a smile blooming on his face. Yeah, he was the luckiest man in the world.
~To be continued…~